Hiring Accounting Talent While Scaling

February 8, 2024 Theresa Rex

accountant in scaling company

When it's time to scale, it's time to celebrate. Consider this: your company has found its place in the market. You've proven the value of what you have to offer. You've likely secured funding, established demand and overcome substantial challenges along the way. When the need to strategize scalability is on the horizon, you've already fought most of the battle, and that's reason enough to pause and toast yourself. Don't rest yet, though – scaling and hiring for your finance and accounting department represent critical work that's yet to be done.

Why It's Critical — And Challenging — To Ensure You Have the Talent to Scale

recruiter ensuring to have the accounting talent to scale

Hiring while scaling is a particularly unique challenge. Leaders of growing companies already have fully loaded plates; finding time to hire talented accounting professionals is unlikely to feel high priority when there's so much strategizing to do. Nothing could be further from the truth. The people within a company are its greatest investment, particularly when it comes to scaling up. It's a differentiating factor among competitors, and to do it right, you need the right people with the right skills deployed at just the right time.

Your Hiring Approach May be Outdated

business manager implementing new hiring methods for department with new hires

If hiring while scaling is a unique challenge, hiring accounting talent at scale can be even thornier. CFOs and other finance leaders have to contend with the usual workload of a scaling company, a potentially crippling lack of talent and a leadership role that's constantly changing besides. The working landscape is changing at a dizzying pace, and the finance and accounting industry is evolving alongside it.

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You need a hiring approach that can keep up. Traditional hiring models – especially in the finance department – have an expensive revolving door built right in. It starts with salaries that have to be particularly competitive in some markets and a benefits package to match. Often this is what leaders have to offer in order to attract any talent whatsoever, let alone someone who will be a good, qualified fit. There's no guarantee that new team members will embrace your company's culture. Because the pool of qualified professionals you're drawing from tends to be extremely lean, you can expect a high rate of separation, and before you know it, you're back at the beginning.

Explore the Newest Hiring Trends in the Finance and Accounting Industry

improving accounting while scaling

First, the obvious: finance work is shifting toward a remote model. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a sudden shift to remote work, which has seen the rise of in-house teams that work from anywhere in the world. Some leaders have chosen to embrace freelance or fractional resources whether they're scaling or not, and more leaders than ever are realizing the potential of outsourced lean accounting teams.

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It's a solution that ticks all of the boxes for growing companies: if traditional hiring has an expensive revolving door built into it, outsourcing has seamless, cost-effective scalability at its foundation. When you can create an accounting team at any size, that can work at any time and operate at scale, you'll be poised to grow at precisely the rate you need with minimal interruptions to output. You'll also have the benefit of saving both money and time that can be reinvested into initiatives that allow you to zero in on growth strategy and core competencies.

Addressing the Talent Shortage: Hiring the Next Generation of Accountants While Scaling

CFO interviewing new talent

One of the very first problems outsourcing can solve is the talent shortage at the root of so much stagnation in finance and accounting departments. Stateside talent pools may be shrinking, but that's not true for outsourcing destination countries like the Philippines. There, you'll find qualified accounting talent with technical skills and globally standard certifications who are GAAP-compliant and ready to hit the ground running – at a significantly lower cost to your business.

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Manila in particular is an educational and professional powerhouse with a deep pool of accounting talent to draw from. Accountancy is growing in prestige among millennial and Generation Z workers there, which essentially amounts to a workforce of digital natives with a solid base of traditional accountancy skills. You need accounting talent with technology skills, and labor markets like the one in Manila has that in spades.

Hire for Any Position in Accounting and Finance – At All Growth Stages

accounting meeting with members of all positions in scaling company

Outsourced accounting is no longer exclusively a tool of enterprise organizations. Outsourcing providers like Personiv – and the clients we serve – are increasingly embracing outsourced lean accounting teams to bridge the skills gap between strategy focused in-house teams and offshore transactional process completion.

Personiv, for instance, creates custom solutions for organizations beginning with teams as small as one. Organizations are no longer limited by minimum hiring requirements that don't serve them or restrictive operational parameters that can't deliver the cost-savings that lean accounting promises. Our robust onboarding process ensures that your team can grow when and how you need it to. We begin by listening -- taking a magnifying glass to your process as we follow your lead so that when you're ready to scale, the talent you need is ready to hit the ground running.

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If and when you need to add to your team, that initial deep listening, robust onboarding and client-led communication ensures that addition will be seamless. You remain in control without relinquishing your valuable time, making it possible to execute growth strategy impeccably and quickly.

And that's something to celebrate.

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